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Success in student Fulbrights
Seven UB students win prestigious awards for international study, research
By SUE WUETCHER
Reporter Editor
Four doctoral students, a graduating law student and two graduating seniors have received Fulbright grants for 2007-08 to study and conduct research abroad.
The seven winners are among eight UB students named finalists in this year's competition for fellowships through the Fulbright Student Program. One student has been named an alternate, and may be awarded a fellowship if one of the original "winners" can't accept his or her fellowship.
"I think this year's result is just the tip of the iceberg," said Patrick McDevitt, associate professor in the Department of History, College of Arts and Sciences, and Fulbright adviser. "We have phenomenal talent on this campus, and the more we can encourage students to strive for these types of grants, the more success we'll have.
"I am thrilled with this result and hope to continue to build on it," McDevitt added. "The only thing standing between us and doubling our number of winners is recruiting more applicants. We're making great progress, but the fact is we can certainly do better.
"Sometimes, students are reluctant to apply for prestigious grants like the Fulbright, Rhodes, DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst—German Academic Exchange Service), Marshall and Goldwater because they sell themselves short," he noted. "However, they'll never know unless they apply. Equally important, the application process is a learning experience itself, even if it's not successful."
The highly competitive Fulbright program is considered the flagship of international student and scholar exchange programs. It aims to increase mutual understanding between the peoples of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills.
The student program is designed to give recent B.S./B.A. graduates and master's and doctoral candidates opportunities for personal development and international experience. Most grantees plan their own programs, which may include university coursework, independent library or field research, classes in a music conservatory or art school, special projects in the social or life sciences, or a combination.
McDevitt explained that Fulbright candidates must submit their applications at the end of September for grants beginning the following September.
Doctoral students, M.A. students and students who will be seniors in fall 2007 who are interested in applying for Fulbright grants can go to http://www.fulbright. buffalo.edu/ for more information.
The student Fulbright awardees and their projects are:
Benjamin Costello, a doctoral candidate in classics who will travel to Cyprus for the 2007-08 academic year to undertake an analysis of the Kourion Earthquake House, a late-Roman structure located atop the acropolis of ancient Kourion on the southwest coast of Cyprus. It was destroyed suddenly in an earthquake in 365 A.D., which allows archaeologists to analyze artifact assemblages in the context of their daily use, rather than after they have been discarded. Although first excavated in 1984-87, there has been relatively little scholarly work on the site and the assemblages are not generally available for examination by scholars. Costello has been given exclusive access to the material by the site's original excavator, David Soren of the University of Arizona. J. Theodore Peña, associate professor and chair of the Department of Classics who has been directing Costello's work, describes his Fulbright project as a "piece of genuinely important scholarly research."
N. Andrew Walsh, a doctoral candidate in music, who will conduct research on intonation and acoustics, particularly the intonation of harmonics, at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, Germany. A contrabassoonist of professional accomplishment, Walsh's music has been performed by internationally recognized musicians. Jeffrey Stadelman, associate professor in the Department of Music, calls Walsh "imaginative, determined, disciplined and highly productive," and describes his Fulbright project as "highly original" and "inspired."
Melinda Wright, a graduating senior, who will study acting in Burkina Faso. Her project is centered on the concept of community-based theater as social education. She will take courses in oral literature and sociology of theater. Jeannette Ludwig, associate professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, describes Wright as "one of the brightest, most self-initiating and multi-faceted students I have worked with in 30 years of university teaching."
Graduating senior Karen Corey, who will serve a 10-month teaching assistantship in Germany through the Padigogischer Austauschdienst grant as an assistant teacher in English classes at German schools. Courey studied for four weeks last summer at the Freie Universität Berlin under a DAAD grant. A member of the UB crew for four years before joining the cross-country squad in her fifth year, she is the first UB student-athlete to receive a Fulbright Fellowship.
Jason Almonte, who will receive a J.D. from the UB Law School May 19, will travel to Canada to pursue an LL.M. in international and health law at the University of Toronto. He is interested specifically in the legal issues surrounding antiviral stockpiling regulations and mutual aid between the U.S. and Canada. His interest in pandemic flu grew out of an internship last summer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Roderick Salisbury, a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology, who will conduct archaeological research in Hungary focused on how economic and climatic change affect agro-pastoralist societies. William Parkinson of Florida State University and director of the Körös Archaeological Project, says Salisbury's Fulbright project "deals with one of the most important questions in anthropological archaeology: How do egalitarian societies respond to environmental fluctuations?"
Elias Rotsos, a doctoral candidate in anthropology, who will travel to Greece to explore the continuing effects of European integration and mass tourism on Greek village life. His work will explore the socioeconomic effects of the global trend of gentrification on Greek village life. Rotsos' Fulbright research will provide the basis of his multimedia dissertation project and ethnography, which will include text, photographs, audio and visual resources.